Love Handles – Make Them a Thing of the Past

The unsightly accumulation of adipose tissue around the mid-section is termed “love handles fat”. While it bares an affectionate name, there’s nothing “lovely” about love handles. It’s awkward, it’s ugly and quite frankly, “love handles fat” makes people appear as if they’re wearing a floatation device around their waist. In order to rid yourself of those undesirable “love handles, there’s a few things you have to understand first. 1) You can’t spot reduce: The solution to getting rid of your “love handles fat” is not to perform a few area-targeted exercises. Rather, what you need to do focus on burning as many calories as you can both during your workouts and after your workout has been completed. Certain exercises burn more calories than others. For example, squats work a lot of large muscles and they’re more challenging to perform than isolation movements such as bicep curls. Not only will squats burn more calories during the workout, but the increased muscle tissue you add to your frame as a result of performing the exercise will increase the amount of calories you burn throughout the day – even when you’re resting. In that sense, performing multi-joint, multi-muscle exercises like squats will help get rid of your love handles even though you’re not specifically isolating the area. 2) Diet is key: It’s been said that weight control is 80% dependant on your nutritional habits. It really doesn’t matter how much you exercise. If you’re nutritional habits are poor – due to either starvation diets or overindulging – you’ll never lose your “love handles fat”. What you need to do is educate yourself because knowledge is key when it comes to living a healthy lifestyle. In order to lose your “love handles fat”, you’ll have to create a calorie deficit. A calorie deficit can be created through a combination of both exercise (calorie output) and proper nutritional strategies (controlled calorie input). The message I’m trying to relate here is that in order to make your love handles a thing of the past, there’s really no quick fix. “Love handles fat” is usually the first to go on and the last to come off. This is due to a hormonal difference between men and women as women tend to store more fat in their hips and thighs. So, in order to get rid of the fat bordering your waist and more importantly, in order to keep it off – you’ll need think long term and make a conscious effort to change your lifestyle rather than allowing yourself to be suckered into buying the next “miracle product” that promises unrealistic – and often unsafe – results.

Tagged as: bicep curls, calorie deficit, Handles, living a healthy lifestyle, Love, Past, starvation diets, Them, Thing